El Norte

I kind of look at MTC as MetroCenter II. I'm not a big fan of MetroCenter, but I would say it moderately successful. Rearding bringing the Bell's bend bridge through Cockril bend: this may be to take advantage of the new Briley Pky / I-40 interchange - which would be relatively useless if the bridge were built further down towards Bellevue.

Irresponsible? Probably not - it's his property to excavate as he sees fit. Brazen and reckless? Maybe. Did Palmer's decision to excavate really represent a last-ditch-effort (as some forumers claimed at the time) to convince would-be financiers that his project was for real? Was it really amature theatrics to show doubters that he was serious about the project and create a sense of "inevitability" about the construction of WES? If so, it represents a major strategic failure that would be hard to ignore for potential lenders in the future. How much confidence would it give you, as a banker, to be face-to-face with "Palmer's Folley" spread out before you on nashville's most prominent boulevard, filled to the brim with water of questionable purity? The false start at WES is a major strike against Palmer's credibility, and in the banking world, credibility counts for a lot...

Wow, that's incredible, looks more like North Korea than Charlotte (I'm referencing the Ryugyong hotel for anyone confused by this comment). Is it even economical to leave a building unfinished like that? Seems you would definitely make more money by finishing it and selling the condo's for a small loss rather than loosing 100% of the construction/land costs by letting the building just deteriorate in the elements...

While I understand why some in this thread are calling for the meeting hall to be underground and maintaining the street grid - I think we need to be realistic. Nashville sits on solid limestone, and they will not be putting a mega-convention-center underground just to maintain the grid. The old convention center disrupts the grid. The arena disrupts the grid. The bicentennial mall disrupts the grid. And, to keep this new project cheap and bring it to completion quickly, it will also disrupt the grid, being mostly above ground, with potentially above-grade or underground connections to the arena. I wouldn't even expect underground parking to be part of this plan, much cheaper to build a parking mid-rise. I think there will be some street-level retail, and possibly some direct connections to adjacent hotels, but this convention center will not become the new focus of downtown, and it will not be another city-financed mall because metro is still smarting from the failure of Church Street Center. The way metro sees it, better to build a mostly (or purely?) civic-purposed building and not take any flak for constantly loosing money, than attempting to build a money-maker, which would (necessarily) fall short of the goal.

Memphis is looking great!!

I question the propriety of that marketing strategy. Advertising a highrise luxury condo on hockey-themed t-shirts? It seems kind of inconsistent with the target demo depicted in the promo vids on the website... I guess anyone who likes dowtown is considered part of the target demo for signature tower....

Kuwait city always amazes me, and you don't hear that much about it...